Guardian dogs spread into Europe

Virtually
all guardian dogs are larger than dog-average and they probably evolved in
Central Asia. The Middle Eastern Assyrians depicted giant dogs in battle with
lions while in India the massive Hyrcanian dog that came from the lands below
the Caspian Sea in what is now northern Iran and Turkmenistan are also part of
art and folklore.

Asian mastiff guard dogs were probably brought by Xerxes
from Persia when he invaded Greece almost 2500 years ago. Others were brought
back to Greece by Alexander the Great when we expelled the Persians and went on
to conquer their entire empire. These became the livestock guardian dogs of
Epirus and Sparta.?Molossia, a region in Epirus, located on the Ionian Sea in
what is now the northwest coast of Greece, gave rise to the term “Molosser,” a
name given to the mastiffs of that region and which is still used to refer to
members of the mastiff family.?From Greece, Phoenicians traders transported
livestock guarding dogs to Italy, France and Spain, and from these regions they
spread throughout the rest of Europe. By this time there were differences both
in the looks and size of the ancient mastiffs. Some, the white, longer muzzled
dogs, remained classical livestock guardians while darker, heavier dogs were
used in war or in the absence of war for dog fighting.

The Tatra Mountain dogs I met evolved from the similar dogs
that served as livestock guardians in what is today Turkey, Iran, and Southern
Russia. These, in turn probably descend from Central Asia where Asian ancestors
of the modern Tibetan Mastiff were found. As ancient nomadic peoples moved
westward, they brought their flocks and their guard dogs. The sheep culture
Sumerians took their sheep and dogs as far west as Hungary and perhaps even to
what is now Estonia and Finland. The central Asian Turkomens brought their
sheep and dogs west from the regions of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan
to what is now Turkey. The Ottomans brought their sheep, sheepdogs and coursing
hounds deep into Europe, as far as Austria.

The very first book on European dogs, written 2000 year ago,
says that livestock guarding dogs were preferably white because that color
allowed the shepherd to distinguish them from wolves (or other predators). Ben
Hart, a veterinarian at the University of California who has been investigating
animal behaviour since the 1960s has a different opinion.?He says that sheep
identify each other primarily by the colour of each other’s face and head. A
dark spot painted around one eye on a lamb is enough to cause a white-faced
lamb to be rejected by its mother. In the Sivas region of Turkey, the local
Kangal-Karaman sheep are uniformly white with black markings on the head. So
are the Kangal sheepdogs that guard them. In Italy the ancient indigenous sheep
of Tuscany were all white, guarded by all white Maremma sheepdogs. Ben Hart
says that it is the ancient colours of indigenous breeds of sheep that have
influenced the colours of today’s sheepdogs.

Sheep and sheepdogs both contributed to Europe’s
development and their histories are deeply intertwined.

The Mausoleum of Galla in Ravenna, Italy contains a detailed
mosaic from the fifth century now entitled Christ the Good Shepherd and in that
mosaic there are small, fine boned sheep with long legs, not unlike the modern
Italian breed the Appenninica. A thousand years later and Italian art still
shows similar sheep but suddenly, in 1580, a totally different type of sheep
appears. The sheep of Leandro Bessanos’ Moses Striking the Rock have short ear,
thick necks and wool covered dewlaps. These are, in fact, Merino sheep,
originally brought to Spain by the Moors. Merinos were and probably still are
the world’s best wool producers.?Merino sheep were a major source of Spain’s
wealth and because of their economic value, the King of Spain banned the export
of Merino sheep but by the 1500s there were over three and a half million of
them in Spain and not enough land to graze them on. The king owned land in
Italy so he sent flocks there, overland, accompanied by flock guarding dogs to
graze on his Italian estates. Dogs accompanied these flocks as they traversed
the Pyrenees into France, crossed France into Italy and moved south to regions
including Tuscany. Merino sheep ‘lost’ during these migrations eventually lead
to the breed being established elsewhere including England. As Merinos spread
throughout Europe, so too did the livestock guardian dogs that accompanied
them.